REPORT: Stacey Abrams in Trouble After Half a Million Goes Missing from Charity

According to a not-so-shocking report in the Washington Free Beacon, twice-failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams could be in major trouble for unreported income. The basis for that claim is that tax documents filed by the New Georgia Project, a charity linked to her, show half a million dollars is missing. That massive financial discrepancy could, the Washington Free Beacon reports, lead to both state and federal elections into the Abrams-linked group.

The report notes that the charity claims to have paid more than half a million dollars in consulting fees to another woke non-profit, the Black Male Initiative. The Black Male Initiative, however, claims to have never received that payment. So $533,846 is missing. In its words:

The New Georgia Project filed its 2021 Form 990 financial disclosure in January, two months after the form was due to the IRS, and three months after the charity’s board chairman fired CEO Nse Ufot, Abrams’s hand-picked leader for the group. In the disclosure, the New Georgia Project reports a $533,846 consulting payment and a $67,500 grant to the Black Male Initiative, an obscure charity run in part by Ufot’s brother, Edima, a former New Georgia Project employee.

But the Black Male Initiative says it never received any such consulting payment. The group provided the Washington Free Beacon with its IRS financial disclosures, which show it collected $0 in consulting income and just $255,000 in contributions from all sources in 2021.

Non-profit attorney Alan Dye, commenting on the matter to the Washington Free Beacon, said “This is something that the Internal Revenue Service should be interested in particularly with the added element of the former officer possibly pocketing the money.” He then added “Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark.”

Further, the missing half million is just the beginning of the financial discrepancies allegedly revealed by the recently filed tax forms, as the Washington Free Beacon also reported, saying:

The missing $533,000 is not the only discrepancy on the New Georgia Project’s tax forms, which contains information that accountants say is “just not possible.” The group’s 2020 financial disclosure, for example, states that the New Georgia Project paid zero dollars in payroll taxes that year.

“I have no idea how a charity can have 173 paid employees and pay no payroll taxes. It’s just not possible,” said Dye. “I can’t answer that question. There should be no excuse for that.”

There is also massive fluctuation in the annual compensation figures. The charity claimed on its 2021 Form 990 that it paid out $5,671,892 in total compensation that year for 105 employees, and that it paid $19,142,227 on salaries the previous year. But forms filed in 2020 say the group paid just $1,914,227 on salaries for 173 employees, a discrepancy of more than $17 million. It is unclear which form, if any, gives the accurate compensation figure for 2020. If the $1.9 million figure is accurate for 2020, that would mean pay skyrocketed even as the number of staffers fell in 2021.

And those aren’t the only problems. That missing half million and those payroll issues are just the latest in a string of scandals and problems for the New Georgia Project.

Earlier in November, for example, the Washington Free Beacon reported that the non-profit was wracked by turmoil. According to that November report, senior staff of the non-profit accused the leadership of it of serious financial misconduct.

Further, the Georgia state ethics commission is going after the New Georgia Project because it allegedly worked with Stacey Abrams in her 2018 gubernatorial campaign. If true, that would mean that it was unlawfully working to get her elected, which a non-profit can’t do (501(c)(3) organizations can only support generic political causes, not specific laws or candidates).

So, both Abrams and her charity are in for a potential world of hurt as investigators pry into what was going on in 2018 and potentially look into whether the allegations of financial misconduct are true and where the missing $533,846 went.

By: Will Tanner. Follow me on Twitter @Will_Tanner_1